The Man

by Irving Wallace

  After posing with the President, and then with Gertrude and the boys, and then with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chief, Beggs fell back against his pillows exhausted. The President held up his hand.

  “Mr. Beggs,” he said, “you are now a unique American hero, the sole citizen in our land who is the possessor of both the nation’s highest military award and its highest civilian award. One might imagine there is no place higher for you to go. However, it is our belief that there is much more you deserve, and can attain, in your chosen career. The Secret Service is waiting for your return to active duty, Mr. Beggs, although not at the same old stand. I am pleased to announce your promotion, effective as of today, to the position of Chief of the White House Detail. Our good friend, Lou Agajanian, is moving on to New York, and you, Mr. Beggs, will have his responsibility, his desk. We need you. Get back to us as soon as you can!”

  Beggs, tears trickling down his cheeks, whispered, “I’ll be there, you bet. Thank you, Mr. President.”

  The room was emptying now, and Gertrude herded the boys against the wall and held back, as the President went to join Flannery, who was waiting for him.

  It was then, as Dilman and Flannery were about to leave, that Beggs remembered something he had meant to tell the President.

  “Mr. President,” he called out. “May I speak to you for a moment, sir?”

  “Why, yes, of course-”

  Dilman nodded for Flannery to go outside, and then he came back to the bed and stood beside Beggs.

  “Mr. President, I just have to tell you one incident I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” Beggs said in an undertone. “Zeke Miller himself, and some fellow named Wine, they were here last night. They sort of sneaked in. They tried to get me embittered about being crippled, tried to work me up against you-but what they were really after was a signed affidavit from me for the trial-a statement confessing that I saw you with Miss Wanda Gibson, behaving like they pretended you behaved-and claiming that I saw you drinking from time to time-and that I saw you, overheard you, at Trafford University talking to your son about the Turnerites. Know what I told them?”

  President Dilman waited, silently.

  Beggs said, “I told them to get the hell out of here before I knocked their crooked heads together and dropped them both out the window.” Solemnly, he stared at the leg suspended in traction. “You see, Mr. President, men like that don’t understand the first thing about the Secret Service. If they did, they’d have known my responsibility is to protect the President of the United States from every harm including assassination, even if it’s character assassination. I guess they didn’t know I was still on duty-and always will be. That’s all I wanted to assure you of, Mr. President.”

  It was the President’s turn, Beggs could see, to be emotionally moved, much as Dilman was trying to hide it.

  “Thank you, Mr. Beggs.”

  “Nothing to thank me for. Like I said-I was doing my job.”

  The moment the President was gone, Beggs wanted to be alone, but there were Gertrude and Otis and Ogden rushing toward him. Gertrude was over him, smothering him with her thin kisses, sniffling and wheezing, while the boys fought to clasp his free hand in panting joy. All Beggs could find to say to Gertrude, keep mumbling to her, was that now, with his promotion, there would be a sizable raise in salary, and now she could start hunting seriously for a different house, something in the suburbs where the Schearers lived, a house in a neighborhood that would make her happier. And she kept saying that it wasn’t a snob neighborhood that she would look for, only a larger place, a ranch-style house with sun, something roomier, that offered better surroundings for the boys. And he kept saying, wearily, that the task was in her department, and he was sure she would find something, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt if she left some time for herself to shop for a new dress or two, maybe that wouldn’t hurt.

  When the nurse pried them apart, and led Gertrude and the children out of the hospital room, Otto Beggs was thankful to be by himself at last. There was a good deal to think about, the gold medal in his hand, its luster dimmed and its size diminished only by his bandaged hulking leg in traction. There was that, and the new executive job with its higher salary, and the new house in a classier neighborhood, and the family with their new respect and new clothes, and yet his mind touched each of these wonders briefly, then impatiently left it behind.

  He turned his eyes toward the modest violet plant standing on the medicine table beside him.

  Upon this, his thoughts lingered at length.

  Otter.

  He wondered what it would have been like, when he was still a man of action…

  “I WONDER,” said Leroy Poole, “what’s keeping the President. It’s twenty minutes already. I’m sick of looking at that stupid fish.”

  Poole grimaced at the fish mounted on the board above the fireplace of the White House reception room, then glanced at Mrs. Gladys Hurley.

  Gladys Hurley, seated straight, her shoulders back, mouth pinched, continued to look at the carpet and said nothing.

  Fretfully, Poole wandered to the desk, picked at the museum-piece typewriter that was supposed to have been used by President Woodrow Wilson (another overrated fink, half his Cabinet members Southerners, ordering Negro Federal employees in Washington to be segregated, so busy trying to make the world safe for democracy he’d let sixty-nine lynchings take place in one year of his administration). Then irritably, Poole returned to the center table, yanked up a chair, and squatted in it, drumming his pudgy fingers on the tabletop.

  He tried to keep his mind from imagining how Jeff Hurley felt this late afternoon, in his debasing prison garb, in his chilly deathrow cell in the State Penitentiary. It made Poole tremble to think what Jeff Hurley himself might be thinking this minute: in six days from this day, this hour, he would be strapped into the big lethal chair, held helpless while the cyanide capsules dropped, and he would be gassed until dead because of kidnaping for ransom and murder. He would be dying for a crime that was not his own but America’s crime, an innocent saint rubbed off the earth because the guilty who remained did not want to hear his accusations. This minute this good giant, this Gulliver pinioned by pygmies, was helpless, voiceless, impotent. Noble Jeff, great Jeff, poor Jeff, lost to life and the future, unless the two of them in this reception room, his protesters by proxy, could save him.

  This was it. They were it.

  Leroy Poole wished that he had obeyed his instinct and traveled down to see Jeff Hurley for himself. When he had proposed the visit, through Hurley’s lawyer, he had learned that Hurley would not have it. Hurley’s sole request of Poole had been to give his mother in Louisville a few bucks to make the trip to Washington, and there to help in building up the appeal for clemency-clemency desired not out of fear of death but out of fear of leaving his scattered but militant armies leaderless.

  There had been little enough of the Turnerite funds left to work with, that for sure. Just recently, Poole had learned to his dismay that Frank Valetti had produced no more than half of the war chest for Hurley’s New York defense lawyer, and had skipped off to his Commie friends behind the Iron Curtain with the rest.

  Poole’s own available funds had been meager. Except for a hundred bucks sent him by Valetti before taking off, except for what Burleigh Thomas (the ignorant numbskull with his stupid assassination attempt) had left behind for Hurley, delivered to Poole by that sister, Ruby (who had disappeared from town fast enough), there had been only his own dwindling bank account, the blood money, the last of the advance against the future royalties from the Dilman biography, which he had not yet had either the time or the interest to complete.

  Poole had spent the Turnerite money and his own savings with care, as if every paper bill contributed another year to his beloved Jeff Hurley’s life. Poole had allotted some of the money for the New York lawyer, and used some for his own side trips and payoffs in order to gather the fresh evidence needed for the appeal. He had doled out some cash in treati
ng influential Negro correspondents in the capital to dinner, bending their ears with the injustice mounted against Hurley, and a good deal of the press space his pleadings obtained had been gratifying, had whipped up further sympathy for Hurley among the Negro population, had even provoked one petition for clemency signed by eight hundred Northern Negroes. Then, when time had all but run out, and the money, too, Leroy Poole had purchased the round-trip bus ticket for Mrs. Gladys Hurley, mailed it to her in Louisville, brought her here to Washington yesterday, put her up in his hotel, all to have her on hand for this last, last climactic act.

  Abruptly, Leroy Poole ceased drumming his fingers on the table. Once more he considered the mother of his idol, and was again vaguely disturbed and disappointed. Most often, Poole had observed, and made note of it for some future writing, the mothers of celebrities proved disconcerting. You might consider a novelist or scientist or philosopher or military hero so great, so invincible, so perfect as to believe that he had burst upon this mundane earth full-grown, without the process of human birth and with no previous habitat except Olympus. And then, sometimes, you learned he had a mother, a living rag, bone, and hank of hair, and it amazed you that a womb belonging to one so unattractive, mean, stupid, or merely garrulous and mediocre, could have produced Greatness. Especially was this often true in the case of celebrities renowned for their beauty, actresses or actors-flawless idols, all, until their mothers came out of the closets, shrill and repulsive crones.

  From the moment that he had sent for her, to the time he had awaited her arrival, Leroy Poole had expected Gladys Hurley to be such a mother, a parent the complete antithesis of her sublime son. And what confounded Poole the most last night, when he had set eyes upon his idol’s mother for the first time, was that Gladys Hurley appeared to be the Olympian mother incarnate. Nothing about her, neither her appearance nor her manner, had contradicted her son’s heroic proportions.

  Secretly, emotionally, Poole had been pleased that Gladys Hurley was worthy of her great son; secretly, intellectually, Poole had been distressed. He had wanted, when he went before President Dilman in these critical moments, someone to supplement himself and his own appeal in the confrontation. The brief that he and the lawyer had prepared, Poole hoped, would provide the argument that would be acceptable to Dilman’s intelligence, what little there was of that. The mother, he had hoped, would be the woeful and pathetic universal mother, perhaps the mother of Dilman’s own childhood, who would shake and soften Dilman and reach his deepest feelings.

  For once, in the shrewdness of his preparations, Leroy Poole had prayed for a nauseating pudding of a mother, a weeper, a mammy talker, a servile, menial mother, a shawl and Good Book mother, a breast-beating, psalm-sniffling, kneeling, begging mother capable of making the hardest heart crack. Instead, he had been handicapped by Gladys Hurley, and the final touch to his grand design had been botched.

  He inspected her now. She was tall and thin, neat and respectable in her dark Sunday-meeting dress. The gray in her hair had been blue-rinsed. Her square, taut, dignified visage was as impassive and tough as that of a plains squaw. She carried silence like a sword. Except for her lack of formal education, which showed itself during her brief forays into speech, except for her work-roughened hands, except for the stoicism in her bearing, there was nothing that betrayed the oppressed and embittered Negro mother. She was worthy of Jefferson Hurley, yes, but she was wrong, all wrong, for a sentimental yahoo like Dilman.

  Nevertheless, between them, they would have to make do, Leroy Poole decided. The cautious confidence he had brought along with Mrs. Hurley to the White House now became surer as he recalled his lengthy petition for executive clemency, his detailed review of the unjust trial and sentence, his documentation of new evidence (the prejudicial remarks to the press by the Federal judge presiding, the refusal of the court to grant immunity to the one surviving Turnerite-since Burleigh Thomas was dead-who had participated in the kidnaping with Hurley but escaped, and had been prepared to vouch for the fact that Judge Gage had threatened Hurley’s life before and after the kidnaping, as well as other new and important facts), and his closing moving plea that the President commute Hurley’s death sentence to life imprisonment.

  Leroy Poole wondered how carefully Dilman, with his self-absorption, the distractions occasioned by his impeachment, had studied the appeal. The last time he had spoken to Dilman-it seemed another age by now-he had been threatening, even insulting, to the President. Would the residue of his resentment weight the scales as part of the President’s judgment? Poole feared it might and then he did not. For when he had last been here in Miss Foster’s office, she had come straight from Dilman to inform him that the President had promised he would see that the cumbersome process of appeal for Presidential clemency would be expedited. If Dilman had still borne him a grudge, he would not have made the concession.

  Indeed, Poole had definitely received cooperation from the Department of Justice. His appeal of the sentence, in the case of the United States v. Hurley, had been rushed through all five stages. His application had been swiftly processed. His affidavits, in the hands of the appointed pardon attorney and United States Attorney, had been rapidly investigated, considered, acted upon, and the Attorney General’s personal recommendation, along with the original appeal, had moved speedily on to the President. Now the petition for clemency was on the threshold of the fifth and final stage-notification of the President’s decision.

  Surely, Poole thought, the Dilman who had read this appeal could no longer be the faint, vacillating, half-ostrich, counterfeit-white Dilman he had known months ago as a senator and as the repugnant subject of his hack biography. Surely, Poole thought, the Dilman who read this appeal had been altered by the events around him, which would explain why Dilman himself was unjustly on trial (yes, even Poole would concede this, because, as Dilman’s smart attorney had said on television today, he was being indicted under an invisible Article of Impeachment directed at his black skin).

  Suddenly Poole was distracted by a movement from Gladys Hurley. She had opened her imitation-patent-leather purse and found her compact, and was phlegmatically examining herself in the mirror.

  As she returned the compact to the purse, Leroy Poole said, “I was just reviewing the case, Mrs. Hurley. I think we have everything on our side.”

  She said, “I hope so, Mr. Poole.”

  He said, “Of course, we’ve got to allow for anything to happen. If-if it goes the wrong way-you remember our discussion last night, don’t you? I mean, we’re of one mind about that?”

  She said, “Yes, sir, if that’s what’ll save my boy.”

  Satisfied, Leroy Poole began to consult his wristwatch for the twentieth time, when the corridor door opened.

  A White House policeman said, “The President is back. He’ll see you now. Right this way to Mr. Lucas’ office. He’s the engagements secretary.”

  Hastily, Mrs. Hurley and Leroy Poole followed the policeman across the checkered tile of the hallway, until they were shown into a modest antechamber with two brown desks. Shelby Lucas, the bespectacled engagements secretary with the Hapsburg lip and undershot jaw, was standing.

  “Mrs. Gladys Hurley? Mr. Poole? Sorry to have delayed you,” he said. “The President had to attend a ceremony, and he’s only now returned. I’m afraid he’s running behind schedule, but you may have ten minutes.”

  Poole liked the sound of that ten minutes. Bad tidings took more time. One did not snuff out another’s life without lengthy explanations. Good news needed no hour hand.

  Lucas had opened the door beside his broad desk, signaled his visitors, and they obediently followed him through a little corridor. Lucas rapped, opened the next door, and announced to the occupant inside, “Mr. President, Mrs. Gladys Hurley and Mr. Leroy Poole.”

  They went inside, and Douglass Dilman, on his feet beside his desk, shook Mrs. Hurley’s hand, murmuring some amenity, and then he took Poole’s fat hand. “Hello, Leroy. It’s been some tim
e. Do sit down over there by the fireplace. It’ll be more comfortable.”

  Poole trailed his miscast mother to the sofa, waited for her to sit stiffly, then sank into a cushion beside her. Dilman, the appeal folder in one hand, sat in the ornate Revels chair. He opened the folder in his lap, licked his thick lips, and peered down at the first page.

  Poole strained to discover a clue to the decision in the President’s face. His visual exploration detected the fatigue of one overtaxed, detected stress, detected despondency. But no facial feature provided a hint of judgment made.

  “Mrs. Hurley-Leroy-” Dilman said, turning a page, still reviewing the bound folder, “I have given considerable time to reading, and re-reading, your request for clemency. It is well conceived and well put together. I have also, since, received the report and recommendation on your appeal from Attorney General Kemmler and his staff. I want you to know that I am fully cognizant of every aspect of the case, from the public protest activity of the Turnerites that inspired Judge Gage to treat the demonstrators harshly, imprisoning them for ten years, to the details of the retaliatory action by Mr. Hurley and his accomplices. I have studied the FBI reports on the kidnaping, and on the shooting in Texas, as well as the transcripts of Mr. Hurley’s interrogation by local police officers and Federal agents, the statement of Mr. Hurley’s refusal to defend himself once his witness would not be admitted under the conditions his attorney requested.”

  Quickly, Poole blurted out, “Jeff Hurley pleaded guilty only after he and his attorney were promised a deal. They promised him an unpremeditated manslaughter sentence and imprisonment with eventual chance for parole, if he would plead guilty. So he pleaded guilty, and then the Federal judge double-crossed him and slapped the death penalty on him.”

  “Yes, I saw that in your brief, Leroy. But the only affidavits you could supply, to support the existence of such a-such a deal, were those signed by Mr. Hurley and his attorney, who are concerned parties. You have no impartial confirming evidence to this deal. According to the United States Attorney’s investigation last week, the other participating parties-the United States Commissioner and Federal judge-vehemently, and under oath, denied that such a deal was ever made, and so did the stenographer present at all meetings.”